Fast train - 300 K/hr in China

Fast train for 700 km

The next day we visit two cement plants – the first one 700 km away.  To reach it we take the high speed train for 3 hrs.  I am quite impressed by their train system, with very modern train stations, and the train hitting a top speed of 305 km/hr.  On the train you hardly notice the speed, the ride is so smooth and the scenery isn’t passing by that quickly to make you think you are going 300 kph.  Unfortunately the scenery is not that interesting.

The construction is still going on everywhere is incredible.  In every city that we pass through there are major apartment buildings under construction as well as new business parks.  I hear two stories however to make you think that all this growth is an illusion; One lady bought an apartment in a new building and after moving in found that despite all the apartments being  sold (bought on speculation), the building was only 10% occupied. This created a problem for her in the winter, when the management wouldn’t heat the building due to its low occupancy.   In the other example,  a company moved offices from one building to another after only 3 yrs due to a new one being built nearby and was in better condition.

The air quality during my visit was fine, or rather it didn’t stink. The sky was never blue and had a grey colour to it the whole time.  The greyness was referred to as “Beijing Blue” meaning that that is as blue as it gets in Beijing.

At the plant visit, the only thing that stands out for me are these motorcycles that have umbrellas on them.  Must be quite the robust design to prevent being ripped apart!



Long flight to China

Zurich to Wuhan China

I am back on the road (air) again after a very long break of virtually no business travel.  This trip I will be hitting three lovely destinations; Wuhan, China. Tuban, Indonesia, and Dhaka Bangladesh.  None of them new to me, and it will be just a lot of air time.  The first leg is a long one.  I left home at 8:30 on Monday morning and three flights later got to the hotel in Wuhan until 9pm Tuesday evening (31 hrs).  Due to the next destinations on my trip I flew through Singapore which added a bit of time to get to Wuhan, including a 6 hr layover in Singapore.  The Cathay Pacific lounge in Singapore is not a good one to spend much more than a couple of hours in.  It has just the basics – without a nice place to stretch out and the food was pretty plain.  I was pretty tired as I didn’t sleep much on the plane, so after a few hours I left the lounge and sat in an outside area.  There was a thunderstorm passing through so it was nice to sit outside with the rain and thunder, with the occasional bolt that landed quite close to keep me awake.

I watched 3 movies, and ate quite a bit on the plane. (the Movies were - Oblivion, Iron Man 3, Monster University) – I think I enjoyed Monsters U the most.  I am getting tired of these action movies – just shoot’em ups.  But Oblivion did have me thinking about it later.  I can’t even remember the plot line of Iron man.

I am now waiting for the arrival of my work colleagues who are flying in from the Philippines.  Their late arrival this morning has given me some extra time to adjust to the jet lag and catch up on emails, while sitting in my big fancy hotel room.  They upgraded me for some reason to the top floor (26^th )with a suite.  Which is a complete waste if you are not traveling with kids.

The 13 yr old engineers

The design office (with 6 desks)

The first day we are driven two hours to a nearby fabrication shop they wish to impress us with.  We are shown around the place by a number of people, two of them young women that look about 13.

Expensive dinner in Singapore

A had a short trip to Singapore a while ago and had the most expensive meal of my life. Well at least the most expensive one that I had to pay for. I should have known not to suggest a steak house to my colleagues, especially seeing that I would be stuck with the bill. However, as we had not ventured outside the hotel in the past two days, I felt that we should go somewhere on this evening. I asked the concierge to recommend a restaurant and he quickly suggested this place "Mortons". And I too would highly recommend it, if someone else is paying. It seems that they are all over the USA.

We decided to walk the 20 minutes to the restaurant and I later consoled myself that at least I saved a few dollars by not taking two taxi's (there were 5 of us).

Upon entering the restaurant I saw that it was quite crowded and relatively small for the large hotel that it was in. We were guided to our seats and oversized menus were handed around. To say that things were expensive is a bit of an understatement. The steaks were 100 USD each, and this didn't include anything else. At this point I considered leaving, or ask who was paying. But guilt kicked in and I realized I would just have to swallow hard and start thinking up the story line to get my expense account approved.

On a positive note, it was an exceptional meal and the wine I selected was also top notch. However, everyone did feel a little guilty about the price and no appetizers or dessert were ordered.
 
The final price tag was about 1000 USD.

The photo below was taken during our walk to the restaurant of the Marina Bay Sands.  The "boat" on the roof has a park and a 150 m long swiming pool.

Snowy bike to work

As my travel schedule has dropped off greatly, I have been left without much to write about, so I will share a photo of my bike to work today.

For the past week it has snowed every morning, making my daily commute to work much more interesting. Here is a photo of the pedestrian bridge that I crossed this morning on the way in to work.

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The entrance to Sydney harbour



 

These photos were taken at the entrance to the Sydney harbour.  They used to have a number of gun emplacements at the top of these cliffs to protect the harbour, but they have been removed and only the concrete remains (pretty poor concrete too by the way).

You can see in the top photo a number of large sailing boats leaving the bay and heading out to sea. 

And I will also share with you the view I had from the restaurant that I ate lunch at.  A very nice lunch too by the way.

 

The Airport Hotel - the penthouse suit

The first night in Sydney I wanted a hotel close to the airport and not too expensive, and I found this lovely little room. Yes, my room is the one up at the top of the stairs.  Despite the awful looks, the hotel turned out to be very comfortable.  Not quite the Trident in Mumbai, but okay for one night.

 

 

 

 

Sydney - Australia

I spent the weekend in Sydney and got the chance to look around a bit.  The activities that they have at the beach are amazing.  The one beach I visited (in Manly) had a Surf boat race. The web page listed it as follows:  (I didn't take these two photos - but they are much better than mine)

"Sydney's Dee Why beach was abuzz on Saturday with a large crowd (it was really only about 100 people) gathering for the fourth and final round of this summer's Schick Hydro Ocean Thunder Pro Surf Boat series. Australia's top 36 surf rowing crews from all over Australia converged on Dee Why for the series which is viewed by millions of television viewers worldwide."

The male rowers were all 6'5" and 230lb's,  real giants.  After watching all these guys wandering around I began to think that everyone is that big here in Australia, but at the next beach they were more the everyday size - short and fat.  I am surprised that this sport isn't the number one sport watched by women.  The guys for some reason, pull their speedo's up to form a sort of thong at the back.  Fully exposing their bottoms.  So at the start of the race you see 6 teams of 5 men with their butts exposed, getting ready to rush down to the boats.  The women's teams don't feel it is necessary to do this with their swim suits unfortunately.

The tough part of the race is getting through the first set of waves, and often one boat is completely swamped and looks like it will sink for sure.  But somehow, they can row with the boat full of water and it drains out the back.

 

Further down the same beach was a larger crowd gathered for kids life guarding training.  They had a series of races set up for kids from age 6 to 13.  The little ones had a relay race where they had to run down to the beach and then swim through the waves, go around a bouy and swim back.  The older kids were doing a race with the rescue boards.  They had to go quite far out and around two bouys then back to the beach.  It looked like great fun and I wished I could join in.